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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27428539">In a Sentimental Mood</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric'>hopeless_eccentric</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Penumbra Podcast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Crushes, Light Angst, Other, Pining, Post-Episode: s1e01-02 Juno Steel and the Case of the Murderous Mask, Tenderness, he doesn't realize it's MUTUAL BWAHAHA, i have NEVER stopped thinking ab it so here's a fic, in train from nowhere when he said he had kept the kanagawas off of Juno, minor blood, nureyev vs his emotions FIGHT, regretfully juno isn't here but nureyev is thinking about him the entire time</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:33:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,522</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27428539</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Nureyev resolved to work alone. His heart would tarry no longer than his cologne, and he would linger over no person longer than his blood red kiss would haunt the halfhearted farewell note he left behind.</p><p>It was a simple enough set of rules to follow. He merely held his name close to his chest and kept that sloppy, traitorous organ beneath his ribs forever filed away. </p><p>And yet, he had sold it cheap for a kiss that tasted like whiskey and a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.</p><p> </p><p>Remember when Nureyev said he'd done a lot to keep Juno safe from the Kanagawas in train from nowhere? Anyway I have never stopped thinking about that so enjoy a fic where he also fights his emotions poor lad</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In a Sentimental Mood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hey all!! hope you like yearning. soft, soft yearning</p><p>Content warnings for blood, background goon murder, bribe mention, alcohol mention</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>From the day he washed his father figure’s blood off his hands and wiped his name from the world, Peter Nureyev had never been more successful than when he had been alone. </p><p>He had often heard it said that if one wanted something done correctly, one would do it themselves, and as such, decided to abide by the rule wholeheartedly. He needn’t friends if he had allies, and he needn’t allies if he was able to handle anything for himself. Confidants meant collateral. Every additional person he did the burden of trusting was another Mag waiting to happen.</p><p>As such, Peter Nureyev resolved to work alone. His heart would tarry no longer than his cologne, and he would linger over no person longer than his blood red kiss would haunt the halfhearted farewell note he left behind.</p><p>It was a simple enough set of rules to follow. He merely held his name close to his chest and kept that sloppy, traitorous organ beneath his ribs forever filed away. </p><p>And yet, he had sold it cheap for a kiss that tasted like whiskey and a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.</p><p>That taste turned bitter in his mouth when he remembered the way Juno Steel had stared at him with a thousand things beating their fists on the prison bar barrier between his mind and his mouth. His eyes had flashed with something that might have been hope for just a moment, lips parted and breathless. Even after Nureyev felt the metal click around his wrist, he thought that expression might very well have been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.</p><p>He was a fool to assume Juno would ever come with him. They had only known one another for a day, of course, though it was enough of a day that Nureyev did the detective the professional idiocy of handing him his greatest secret on a silver platter. </p><p>Perhaps that writhing rat king of anxiety at the back of his mind was correct to think he might as well have ended his life when placing it into Juno Steel’s hands. However, it had been several weeks since the debacle with the Kanagawas, and he was yet to be found dead.</p><p>As much as the foolish, fluttering thing within his chest wanted to believe that Juno had treasured his gift for what it was worth, he knew damn well that he had been doing a particular amount of not dying all on his own. If anything, Juno had Nureyev to thank for being able to do the same.</p><p>Peter Nureyev was a master thief who could reduce a throat to a lipstick-red bloodstain with a single flick of the wrist. He could fend for himself. He was also a master thief who had been utterly undone by a cad of a detective who returned his advances with an arrest, though that seemed to hardly matter when it came to the Kanagawas. </p><p>Any misgivings he had about his skills were cut through with the ease of wet cardboard, or rather, the goons sent to gut Juno Steel. </p><p>However foolhardy the detective had made him, he could not change how adept he was with a blade. In fact, he hardly had a speck of blood to scrub from his brow that evening, leaning over a washbasin and mere inches from a seedy mirror in an even seedier motel room. </p><p>Perhaps, when the worker at the front desk had asked for a name, Nureyev had faltered and said to put it under ‘Caesar Steel’ only because his thoughts and current moniker had blurred in his head. That didn’t change the fact that he had gotten the job done, and that the very last of the evidence against him was rubbing away into the washcloth. </p><p>He leaned a little closer to the mirror, bringing the soapy cloth up to a speck of blood along his hairline. The closer he stood to the mirror, the less he could see the face of the man who had just shot him in the foot. </p><p>He hadn’t killed those goons because of anything other than business. Juno was an innocent party in the matter, and had circumstances not been cruel, he would not have been involved in the investigation at all. It was merely polite to keep neutral parties out of the line of fire. Nureyev's fondness for the detective was of no matter, he told himself, for he would have done the same for anyone else in the same situation.</p><p>And yet, he could not think of a single similar instance. </p><p>He shook his head and sighed, as if he could fling the thoughts of the petulant detective who lingered like a lost lover’s perfume by force. However, Juno Steel was as stubborn in memory as he was in personality.</p><p>Had Nureyev been a better criminal, he would have noticed that he had long since finished scrubbing the blood from his nails. However, had Nureyev been a better criminal, he would not have been swept away in the memory of a detective who, perhaps, no longer wanted anything to do with him. </p><p>Peter closed his eyes, grounded only by the cloth on his hands as he remembered that kiss, soft and earth-shattering in the same breath. He would die happy if he could hear that noise Juno made but one more time, for he had travelled the galaxy for decades and never heard a sweeter sound. He doubted there were kinder touches than the feeling of Juno’s hands around his waist, even if they were put there with malicious intent. </p><p>He imagined it wasn’t a perfect kiss. Nureyev had to stoop and Juno nearly leapt into him, his enthusiasm knocking Rex Glass’s seduction aside and making way for Peter Nureyev’s grin. It had been hard to rearrange his mouth into something compatible for a long moment.</p><p>Nureyev seldom spent time imagining lovers, even as often as he would pretend to be one. When he did allow himself to imagine, particularly in his younger days as a thief, he would picture someone so unbearably romantic that Peter would probably hate them. The image had been one of being swept off his feet, or rather, doing the sweeping, though either way, the object of his affections would be some generic model from the cover of a cheap romance novel.</p><p>If anything, he had expected whispered affections and back-alley kisses and a dozen roses to completely undo him. However, he had been left useless, frozen to the spot with his heart pounding pointlessly against another beating twice as fast, and it had not been at the hand of some great romance. Rather, the planet seemed to stop spinning when Juno all but hopped into his embrace, just to be able to reach him.</p><p>There was something unabashedly Juno about the kiss, and the soft, stupid part of him that had sold his greatest asset away for the lady who had arrested him adored it. Nureyev feared that most of all. </p><p>He shook his head, avoided looking his reflection in the eye, and finished wiping the last of the blood he had spilled to save Juno Steel off of his hands. He tried to tell himself to file it all away, though Juno refused to fit in any file or folder or drawer. </p><p>The burning rage in his chest when he brought his knife down or the curling of his lips into a smile when he paid another bribe were not borne from love. Peter Nureyev did not fall in love. He worked alone. He relied on no one. He did not, to his knowledge of the feeling, love Juno Steel.</p><p>Rather, he decided after he slumped an aching body down onto a creaking bed, he had a complicated bouquet of feelings for Juno Steel, and he could deal with them all at a much later date. Perhaps they would merely disappear as he did, like smoke trailing away from the mouth of a starlet. </p><p>However, when his comms buzzed with an encoded number he recognized to be Miasma’s, he found it was rather difficult to disregard two things at once. Perhaps, if it meant ignoring the calls of his unknowingly former employer for a little longer, he could indulge a thought of Juno Steel for an hour or so.</p><p>Nureyev knew he wouldn’t sleep for some time, not with blood fresh in his nose and his comms lighting up like a fireworks show. </p><p>The part of him that felt warm when the detective had kissed him and dragged his lips into a smile that belonged to no alias when Juno said something particularly petulant breathed a deep breath when he did. Peter greeted it like an old friend. He let his eyes drift shut and his mouth drift into the same lazy, distracted grin that once haunted his face as a young man in Brahma, back when he believed he might ever have the luxury of loving someone.</p><p>Not every thought had to be filed away forever, he decided. Perhaps, it wouldn’t hurt to take this one out for a walk.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>im somft who woulda known. also fun fact i wrote this to a sea shanty playlist and nothing yearns harder than a sea shanty lemme tell ya</p><p>Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill make ye walk the dreaded plank</p><p>Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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